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Takeshi Kitano is an international icon. We know the actor, the multi-award-winning filmmaker, but many ignore his split personality: the crazy TV star, the street kid from Tokyo close to the Yakuza, and the political satirist who blasted taboos!

Can we dream of a better guide to introduce us to the cultural history of Japan?

In 30 years of a deeply committed career and 50 roles, Denzel Washington, double-Oscar winner, placed the figure of the Black man in all its complexity at the heart of the American paradoxes: from Black activist, rebel soldier to gangster torn between violence and charity.
 
 

Voted best actor of the 21st century by the New York Times a few months ago, Denzel Washington, 65, has risen to the top of American cinema. Actor, director and producer, he has shaken up a "color line" as immutable as it is subtle. Often identified with his characters, he reveals himself to be disconcerting and paradoxical. As if he were holding up a mirror to America in which all of its contradictions and failings were reflected

Brad Pitt is a singular actor in Hollywood’s glamorous world, breaking through his “playboy image” and embodying American cinema’s renewal. Discover the hidden side of the most handsome man in the world.

A humble Midwestern aware of being a smokescreen for the illusions of his time, who has managed to keep control of his image to better serve the most talented directors of our time. To name but a few: David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Terrence Malick, James Gray and soon Damien Chazelle. Dive into the brain of a complex, brilliant and endearing personality, far from the cliché of a world-famous movie icon.   

Whether you like him or not, whether he arouses admiration, perplexity or laughter, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s life is an incredible and unconventional adventure from Belgium to Hollywood hills.

In 1988, an unknown man named Jean-Claude Van Damme became a worldwide celebrity by getting the lead role in a low-budget martial arts film that should have been released only on DVD, but would make millions of dollars.

This was the beginning of a meteoric rise for the young Belgian who had arrived in Los Angeles six years earlier, without money or contacts but with a stainless determination, which, after many setbacks, would make him one of the best rated action film actors in Hollywood for more than a decade.

Harder would be the fall at the end of the 90s, which drug abuse would accelerate. Mocked for the lunar and surrealistic reflections with which he now spices up his interviews, Jean-Claude would however know salvation in 2008 thanks to his humble and lucid performance in JCVD, a French film telling the story of a former kick-boxing star who has lost everything and finds his roots in Brussels. After which, little by little, Van Damme would climb back up the steps of respect.

Since then, between the United States, Asia and Europe, Jean-Claude Van Damme, unable to stop, has switched between action films, dramas and self-deprecating parodies, making him one of the most lovable figures in cinema.

Over the years, Oscar winner Nicole Kidman, became both a pop culture icon & a complex dramatic actress. Her career is a unique body of work that mirrors her personal life, which is more political than it might seem.

At the top and insatiable for 40 years, Nicole Kidman was able to go beyond her plastic beauty in which we could lock her by constantly renewing her range of characters. She soon began taking more significant roles, working with Gus Van Sant, Jane Campion, and Stanley Kubrick.
Then, she laid down the foundations for an issue she would increasingly explore over more than 30 years and 70 films – the place of women in society.
To tell this story : Nicole Kidman’s own words from a unpublished long interview.

The rise, fall and resurrection of Mel Gibson, one of the most successful but also controversial Hollywood stars. From Mad Max to The Passion of the Christ, from Lethal Weapon to Braveheart… 

Hollywood likes to devour its own children. In ten years, Mel Gibson has gone from hero to zero.
At the very beginning of the 2000s, he was cashing in on record fees of 25 million dollars per film. With two flagship franchises to his credit as an actor, Mad Max and Lethal Weapon, a budding career as a filmmaker acclaimed by audiences and peers alike (the epic Braveheart, his second film, won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director), an undiminished popularity with all audiences (women, men, children...) and a long and fruitful marriage with his wife Robyn (twenty years together and seven children), Mel Gibson was for two decades one of the most envied Hollywood superstars of his time.
 
All that is now in the past: today, Gibson does not even seem to be part of the American film landscape. The industry has made him the man to kill with lightning speed. And, in fact, he was shot.
 

The portrait of the last cowboy Hollywood legend. Dive into 65 years of career in Hollywood, highlighted iconic films: from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as well as Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and Gran Torino, all the way to Cry Macho in 2021.

It is no small task to cover more than 60 years of cinema history, especially when it is surveyed with such breadth and diversity: TV star, international star, controversial icon, contested director, filmmaker with a capital F, Eastwood has been through it all, experienced it all, and it is first of all this romantic trajectory, this true American pastoral that I want to tell with all the passion I possibly can.
 

First woman to have won the Best Director Oscar, obsessed with the violence that underlies all of her cinematographic work, Kathryn Bigelow's portrait also tells a story of violence in the United States.

"I've always seen violence as political. I see it as a power strategy" Kathryn Bigelow is right. That' s the way it is, death is cinematic.
The atmosphere is getting tense in the United States. Violence is on the rise. Up until now, it was present on screen. Now it seems to be overflowing, invading reality. One filmmaker has seen this phenomenon before others. Whether we like it or not, Hollywood remains our dream machine. And when we take a closer look, the vast majority of the stories that these blockbusters tell us are made of violence: crime, torture, war, rape and murder, which populate these imagination machines.

Uncover the secret story of the 3-time Oscar winner and actor, Daniel Day Lewis, who decided to quit the industry after intense roles directed by legends such as Scorsese and Spielberg.
 

He is also known as one of the most selective international actors. He has announced his intention to retire from acting after the shooting of Phantom Thread in 2017. Daniel Day-Lewis is a visceral and uncompromising actor: in just 20 films, he never stopped pushing the envelope in his performances. He had more than a sterling work ethic; he poured his blood, sweat and tears in his craft. It was a way for him to escape from a family legacy that had become too heavy to bear. This film harks back to the roots of a family mythology, in which the actor is the last hero, in spite of himself.

Anthony Perkin’s face and name remain familiar to a younger 21st century audience, fond of Giallo and slashers. But he has long struggled in the shadow of his most famous character, Norman Bates – the serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, “Psycho”.

Officially presented as the most exciting new star since James Dean on the poster of “Friendly Persuasion”, Anthony Perkins has attracted the attention of such prestigious filmmakers as George Cukor, William Wyler, Stanley Kramer, Anthony Mann, Robert Mulligan, Jules Dassin, René Clément, Claude Chabrol, John Huston, Ken Russell, Sidney Lumet and Orson Welles. And the list of his co-stars does not pale in comparison, with names such as Gary Cooper, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Sophia Loren, Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Marlene Jobert, Paul Newman and Roger Moore. His filmography ended up being rather impressive for an actor who was so abusively reduced to his only role for Alfred Hitchcock. We also discover that he was an amazing crooner.
His greatest success, “Moonlight Swim”, will be taken up by Elvis Presley. He even directed “Psycho III” – proof of his reconciliation with his favorite bogeyman.

The biopic of an Italian immigrant becoming one of the world’s greatest directors. Frank Capra believed in the American Dream as much as he lived it.
 

A strange echo today...

The first filmmaker was a woman and her name was Alice Guy. Even though she shot the first fiction film in history, her work remained in the shadows...

With nearly a thousand films, the most abundant career of her time which she was the only one to carry out on both sides of the Atlantic, this pioneer was literally wiped out by film historians during her lifetime. This film paints a fascinating portrait of an ardent and visionary woman, who has never stopped conquering new territories, only to end up with one last dream: to regain her destiny. It finally gives her the floor to deliver her version of history and regain her place in history.
 
"Alice Guy was an exceptional director, with a rare sensitivity, a remarkably poetic eye and a great instinct [...]. She has written, directed and produced over a thousand films. And yet, she was forgotten by the industry she helped create.” Martin Scorsese